ElevenLabs, a startup that develops AI-powered tools for creating and editing synthetic speech, is making its Reader app available globally, with support for 32 languages.
The app, which was first released in the US, UK and Canada in June, allows users to upload text content such as articles, PDF documents and e-books and listen to them in a variety of languages and audios. Reader currently supports languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, French, Hindi, German, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, Italian, Tamil and Swedish.
ElevenLabs, which became a unicorn earlier this year after raising $80 million from Andreessen Horowitz and other investors, offers APIs that businesses can use for a variety of purposes, including voice-over and text-to-speech. The company also provides voice interactions for Rabbit r1, as well as text-to-speech for AI-powered search engine Perplexity and audio platforms PocketFM and KukuFM. The Reader app is the company's first consumer product.
The company said it has added hundreds of new voices from its library suitable for a variety of languages, and last month it licensed the voices of actors including Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds and Sir Laurence Olivier for the app.
The expanded language support is enabled by the Turbo v2.5 model, released last month, which ElevenLabs says will reduce latency and improve quality of text-to-speech conversion.
The Reader app's biggest rival is Speechify, which offers additional features like scanning documents for text detection, integration with Gmail and Canvas, and the ability for users to replicate their own voice to read text aloud. Mozilla-owned Pocket and The New York Times' Audm-based audio apps also allow users to listen to content.
ElevenLabs said it plans to add more features to the app, including offline support and the ability to share audio snippets.